Feb
28
2024
Many Australian farmers are troubled by issues outside their control: bad weather, falling commodity prices, disease outbreaks, ebbing demand for produce. These can lead to difficult streams of thought which are hard to ignore – especially because many farmers spend long stretches of time working in isolation. At the same time, cultural expectations can mean some …read more
Feb
28
2024
Sophisticated career-changing professionals with bachelors’ degrees – vets, engineers, entrepreneurs, physicists – have signed up to study a master’s degree to head back to high school and help educate the next generations of Victorians. The number of disadvantaged schools in La Trobe University’s Nexus teacher education program jumped from 15 in 2020 to 80 by the …read more
Feb
28
2024
Semi-conducting polymers look set to revolutionise many long-entrenched medical systems, from blood sugar monitoring for diabetic patients to testing for a range of diseases including Covid, and potentially even for detecting conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Paul Dastoor, physics professor and director of Newcastle University’s Centre for Organic Electronics, has spent his career researching these …read more
Feb
28
2024
Seven months after her long-term career unexpectedly ended, Melbourne professional Carmel Murphy is coming to terms with retirement. “It’s very different,” she says. “You don’t get the thousand emails. You don’t get the calls. You don’t get the staff who require your assistance. It’s taking me quite a while to get used to that.” Now 65 and …read more
Nov
29
2023
Almost eliminating the labour costs of on-site construction, Wild Modular has burst on to the accommodation scene in recent years with a range of speedy pre-fabricated accommodation. Taking just weeks to manufacture in a western Sydney factory, these pods can be erected and completed on site in a few days. Used in remote resorts and retreats, …read more
Nov
22
2023
Australia’s oldest and most prestigious universities, mostly sandstone and clad in ivy, have topped the global reputation category in The Australian Financial Review’s Best Universities Ranking, despite faring poorly in measures of student satisfaction. The University of Melbourne ranked first for global reputation, followed by equal second for the University of Sydney, the University of Queensland …read more
Nov
8
2023
The day will come when comfortable augmented reality headsets will replace mobile phones and be worn nearly all the time, says Tim Dwyer, leader of Monash University’s data visualisation and immersive analytics lab. Gardeners wearing one of these headsets might gaze into a garden and see a variety of plants with an overlay of Latin botanical …read more
Nov
8
2023
Richard Ryan has spent a lot of time researching motivation: understanding why people do what they do, why they choose certain courses of action and why they reject others. A clinical psychologist, Ryan jointly developed the self-determination theory of motivation which he says is applicable in the workplace, in education, in healthcare systems and even in …read more
Nov
8
2023
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for marketing and in commercial enterprises like hotels and restaurants has become the focus of Catherine Prentice’s current research. She plans to further explore how AI can improve the consumer experience and foster consumer loyalty to a brand or an organisation as well as how it can improve employee efficiency. …read more
Nov
8
2023
A physical oceanographer, Jessica Benthuysen monitors real-time data on the temperature, salinity and currents of oceans thousands of kilometres from her desk in Perth. She has worked with the Australian Institute of Marine Science for the last decade, first in Townsville and now in Western Australia, using ocean observations and ocean models to understand more about …read more